The seven books I'm not posting covers of

I keep being tagged in those social media posts where you're supposed to put up a number of books you love or books that have changed you or just books. With no comment or explanation, they usually say. I suppose this is so that it doesn't seem like a hard thing to do. Maybe so that it provokes other people to comment. I've done this before, I always want to shout about books I love, but the tags are coming so thick and fast in the current situation - what else have people got to do but look back at books, movies, music, paintings that they love - that I can't bring myself to join in. And besides, I find I want to comment. I have things to say about books. I want people to hear them.

So I was lying in bed, thinking about what I might choose if I was posting seven books that mean a lot to me/changed my life/I want to share. I thought I'd need to browse through my bookshelves but actually seven books appeared in my head straight away. Of course, as a children's book nerd, all seven are children's books. I do read other things. I love many, many books aimed at adults, but I don't feel nearly as passionate about them as I do about the children's books I love. Why would that be? Is it because the books I loved as a child stood out more because the pool of all the books I had read was smaller when I read them? Is it because I wasn't consciously looking for books that were like books I'd already enjoyed, so that finding these was a joyful happenstance?

I'd be interested to know if adults who don't read children's books have stand-out books from their childhoods that they would consider including in a list of favourites. As us children's writers know, many adults see children's books as less worthy than books aimed at adults. I think if anyone who had been a reader since childhood gave it some thought, they would easily put their finger on a few stand-out books from their childhood.

So here are the seven books that sprang into my mind.

What can I say about them? They seem distinctly 'girly' to me, but that could be to do with the era in which I was a child. There's a clear progression in when I took up each as 'my favourite book'. But somehow even when I championed a new one, all the others still remained 'my favourite'. The order is:

Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban

Five Dolls in a House by Helen Clare

Thursday's Child by Noel Streatfeild

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Henrietta's House by Elizabeth Gouge

Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer

Fifteen by Beverley Cleary

So I thought, instead of just showing you covers, I'd tell you why I love these books. I've already written about most of them on this blog. You can click on the titles above to see what I had to say.  The rest I'll write over the course of the next few weeks. There isn't after all anything much pressing to do at the moment.

Frances - the most real small child I've ever read

I remember almost no picture books from my childhood. I suppose this may be because they would have been library books for the most part. At home, I had a handful of Beatrix Potters which I valued more for their satisfying size than for their stories.

The one story I could remember as an adult was Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban. Why this particular book stuck with me more than all the others I must have had read to me I have no idea. Of course, it is a very fine book, so perhaps my pre-reading self had some literary discrimination. All I know is that this was a book that if I saw it on the library shelves, I would immediately add it to my pile. That copy must have spent more time in our house than it did at the library.

This was the book that I sought out when I had my children. I bought Bread and Jam when my eldest daughter was two and eventually we had most of the Frances books, though the only other one that was familiar to me was A Baby Sister for Frances. We also had a rather delightful tape of Glynis Johns reading the stories. Oh I wish I had that tape still. She was odd and real and just perfect.

Why did Frances appeal so much? What was it about these stories that caught me? Frances, though she is, of course, a badger, is very much an ordinary child. Nothing much happens. In Bread and Jam Frances is fussy about her food so Mother gives her bread and jam for every meal until Frances realises that that’s dull and there are other foods she likes. Put so plainly is sounds almost Victorian – Frances acts up and learns a lesson. But it’s not like that at all. All the characters bounce off the page with life. We know exactly how Frances feels – and she feels so much and so strongly – and we understand it. She is one of the most real small children I’ve ever read. And you can’t help but love her rhymes:

The language of these books has seeped into our family vocabulary. We know what we’re referring to when we talk about things ‘coming out even’. When ever opportunity arises, I will say ‘You can be sure there will always be plenty of chocolate cake around here.’

It’s the detail I love. When Frances watches her friend Albert eat his extensive packed lunch, we get every detail of his ritual as he cracks his hard-boiled egg, peels it, salts it, bites it, then moves on to take a bite of his sandwich and his pickle and a drink of milk. You can feel Frances's envy at every bite. And at the end, her own joy in doing the same with her new non-bread-and-jam lunch, made even more special by the inclusion of a doily and a tiny vase of violets. 

This is very wordy compare to most modern picture books, and I know there are versions out there where the text has been cut, but I believe every word of this is necessary and every word is a great pleasure. For someone who loves children’s books so, I found reading to my kids something of a chore and in particular I disliked wordy picture books. Maybe I could feel the children getting restive and wanting to see the picture on the next page. I never found that with Frances though. I would willingly start again the moment I’d reached the end. Pure quality? Or because it was so embedded in my memory that the book felt like all the very best things about books and childhood and reading aloud.